Amazon Begins Housing Homeless In Seattle (jeffreifman.com)

reifman writes: Amazon announced that it will commit one of its buildings to housing 200 Seattle homeless people for the next year, allowing a nonprofit organization to oversee the facilities... With more than 4,505 living on the streets, Seattle's mayor recently declared a homelessness emergency... More than 45 people died on the streets in 2015, heroin related deaths in King County are at a 20-year high, and neighborhoods are up in arms about homeless drug use, crime and people living in cars.
The Seattle Times notes that Amazon's construction on the lot isn't scheduled until 2017, so they reached out to the homelessness nonprofit to temporarily offer its use, hoping to later offer the group a second site. (The nonprofit will pay the site's utility bills).

Comments

Re:Buying off the poor

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

People are not homeless because they are poor. They are homeless because they are mentally ill, usually combined with alcohol and drug abuse.

We need to address both poverty and homelessness, but they are two very different issues.

This is often true, and the homelessness/poverty cycle is a vicious circle. Mentally ill often self medicate with alcohol and drug abuse, which can quickly lead to being unemployable (if they weren't already unemployable in some fashion), and being unemployed they have little or no money, certainly not enough to afford housing. No housing means you're gonna be living on the street, which can exacerbate both mental illness and a state of being unemployable. It's an ugly cycle, very difficult to extricate yourself from once you've fallen into it.

There are, however, some people who genuinely do want to be homeless, but in general they're a fraction of those who are homeless. Most would prefer to have shelter and some sort of place to call home.

As far as Seattle goes, I've been seeing more and more people hanging out at freeway entrances/exits looking for handouts in the last few years. I don't recall seeing nearly as many of them 10 years ago, or even 5. Homelessness has definitely gotten worse here as far as I can tell.

Re:Or

[BarbaraHudson]

As a follow-up:

The woman who is afraid of going on the bus for more than a decade never told anyone else about the rape by her ex. She told me 2 years ago. The stigma is that bad, I couldn't convince her to come with me to get some help at the hospital.

Another woman can't walk alone on the sidewalk of any street with traffic since she was hit by a car that ran a stop sign and banged her up pretty good. She couldn't even cross the street to go to church. Her life is basically limited to a few blocks where there is no traffic. Other than that she stays home alone.

Neither of these women were using illegal drugs or booze. So, if they were to end up homeless, what bad decisions did they make? They have withdrawn so far from the world, in self-defense ... they wish they weren't that way, but they have no control over it.

Re:Cool but here's another idea

[geekboybt]

They tried that already: http://kuow.org/post/amazon-hires-homeless-workers-and-everyone-ends-disappointed

Re:They can't hover!

[sumdumass]

Nah. We have an all volunteer military and if they weren't quality people we would have a draft to get enough of them in. As it is now, we are turning people away.

The issues with vets has to do a lot with transitions from a very structured life to a very non structured life and wars or experiences from wars they were in. It isn't exactly easy going from knowing you could die at any time to relative safe environments with some of the self preservation behavior resurfacing. This causes conflict in some situations where there should be none and behavior that seems strange in others.

I worked with a guy who would duck slightly when loud sharp noises happen. It was more like a startled twitch but we knew it was reaction from Afghanistan and he really wanted to find cover. He would soon after appear a bit anxious and become short tempered. If it wasn't for a supervisor being a veteran too, he probably would either have lost his job or be well on the way to it. We had several vets there (I don't work there any more) and most were perfectly fine while some had issues all were good people.

Re:I assume there is some kind of tax incentive fo

[Jiro]

Remember back when George Lucas built low income housing? He did it out of spite. His neighbors wouldn't let him build a film studio, so he built the housing instead and there was little they could do about it. (I haven't been following it, I don't know if his neighbors finally gave in.)

I wonder if something similar is going on here. Building housing for the homeless is a great way for someone rich to spite his neighbors. They can't complain because the area is zoned for housing and objecting to helping the homeless makes them look bad. Meanwhile you know very well the housing is going to drive property values down and cause lots of nuisance for your neighbors.

Re:Buying off the poor

[KGIII]

Yup. They tell me that I'm sane and I've made sure to get second, third, fourth, fifth, etc. opinions on it. (I go talk to a therapist fairly often when I'm home, I find it good to have someone objective to talk to.) Yet, I was a functional addict and alcoholic for years. I would literally leave meetings and shoot up in the bathroom. I kept rigs in my office. I was into Fentanyl (80x stronger than heroin) so I could wear a patch if I had to travel. I also drank. I drank for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We had a bar and a pool table in the back of our home office. I used it often.

I functioned just fine. It wasn't really a problem. In fact, I did quite well. It was when I retired that something broke in my head. I didn't actually use more drugs or drink more alcohol (I don't think) it's just that my body/brain somehow knew it didn't actually have to function any more. I turned into a sloppy drunk and was nodding out and drolling on myself with a rig in my hand and blood staining my trousers. My neighbor, I've mentioned her many times, used to come check just to make sure I was alive - she's the same person I call my house cleaner 'cause I pay her and that's what she does. Sometimes she lets me pretend to be the boss.

Anyhow, it was weird. It's like my brain flipped a circuit. I was no longer a functional alcoholic, I was just a drunk. I was no longer "chipping." I was a junkie. I put shitloads of money in my veins and up my nose - obscene amounts. Like, numbers that would scare people. I've tried to figure it out, using averages and average street prices (I tended to buy in bulk) and the numbers are too shameful for me to actually mention.

But it was something about the no longer needing to be functional, no longer having people depend on me, no longer having a company to keep afloat, no longer having to worry about money, no longer having to worry about appearing to be "normal." That just snapped. I went, without changing usage quantities, to dysfunctional and junkie stage. (Gotta be honest, there were some good times, good times indeed.)

And yes, they insist that I'm sane. I started the alcohol as a kid and the opiates while in my early teens when I broke an ankle and then a wrist in short succession. At first it was the codeine and that warm blanket feeling. Then I pretended that made me sick so they gave me stronger stuff - but I kept the first script, and it just worked its way through that. They didn't do much testing in the military so I kept on going - the corpsman was my friend. Then, 30 years later, I'm strung out and puking and shitting at the same time trying to quit. *sighs* Never again... I don't ever want to go through withdrawals again.

But yeah, they assure me that I'm perfectly sane. I'm not sure that I agree with them so I keep getting second opinions but, so far, they all tell me that I'm not just sane but that I'm pretty much the definition of sane. I'm not sure how they come up with that considering the drug and alcohol abuse/addiction but they're the experts and I'm the junkie.

I did do rehab, by the way. I was on a monster dose of Suboxone for quite a while but I've been weaning myself off of them. I haven't actually taken any in a while now but I have been smoking a bit of weed and I'm in Florida so I can't admit to it but there's all sorts of Bolivian Marching Powder in the area.

They're quite convinced that I'm sane. Three out of the four voices in my head seriously disagree with the sentiment! ;-)

Hmm... I should probably post this as an AC but, alas, I am not a coward and I'm always suggesting that people accept responsibility and be accountable. It would be hypocritical for me to post this as an AC. Well, that and my particular posting style would likely give it away. So, here it is in all its glory.